Alien Anthropologist On Earth
Contact Author:
Dan Fisher, PhD
College of Business, 312-I
University of Central Arkansas
201 Donaghey Ave.
Conway, AR 72035
djfisher@uca.edu
(918) 853-2593
Dan is director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program. He teaches courses on the
subjects of creativity and innovation and new product development. He is constantly
experimenting in the classroom to develop better methods that help students discover
better problems to solve and craft solutions that are irresistible.
Scott Smith, PhD
Harmon College of Business and Professional Studies
University of Central Missouri
Dockery 300
Warrensburg, MO 64093
sdsmith@ucmo.edu
(660) 543-8559
Scott Smith is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Central
Missouri. His research and teaching interests are in consumer behavior, advertising and
branding. He has written numerous articles on pedagogy and assignments from his
classroom have appeared in several journals.
Alien Anthropologist on Earth
Abstract
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Innovation often begins with an “eye.” Close observation of everyday behavior is one of the
most important tools for discovering game-changing problems to solve for the innovator
and entrepreneur in training. However, our habits and routines often obstruct our ability to
see the world with fresh eyes and this limits our insights. This exercise returns energetic
and creative newness to everyday perception by placing student in the role of an alien
anthropologist visiting some small part of planet earth for the first time.
Keywords: innovation, entrepreneurship, observation, problem discovery
Subject Area: building discovery skills
Subject Topic: customer insight
Student Level: undergraduate
Time Required: 30-60 minute observation period, 60+ minutes to write up, and class
sharing
Recommended Number of Students: any, can be done individually or in small groups
Alien Anthropologist on Earth
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Close observation of human behavior is essential to the innovation process. This is
one of the most powerful methods to discover hidden problems and novel insights that
spark the development of new products and businesses. IDEO, one of the world’s leading
product development companies, places this skill at the center of its discovery process
(Kelley and Littman, 2005).
The challenge with observation for the innovator is that the adult brain has
routinized perception for most of the situations it encounters (Eagleman, 2012). The brain
automatically fills in much of what it visually perceives because it is fast and efficient to do
so. This frees up our mental processing to attend to more specific concerns and tasks we
have not mastered.
This efficiency becomes a key barrier to close and deliberate perceiving – we look,
but we do not see. This is often referred to as the “curse of the expert” or the “curse of
expertise” that explains how preconception becomes the majority of our perception.
So how do we go about training new innovators to see with fresh, beginner eyes the
familiar things that people do? If déjà vu is the feeling of experiencing something
previously, then “vuja de” is the feeling of experiencing something for the very first time. In
these first-time moments, we are more aware and attentive because these things show up
as new and foreign.
While the notion of the beginner’s mind seems to have wide acceptance in product
development and startup circles, the specific methods for deploying this in practice appear
less well-defined. The question became how do we create a classroom exercise that equips
students to experience “vuja de” reliably and repeatedly so they develop close, discerning
observational skills in their everyday lives?
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One of our answers is the alien anthropologist on earth exercise. This exercise
places students in the role of an extraterrestrial sent to study the behaviors of humans in
particular contexts and develop a report of the findings. The idea is to make students shift
into the role of a complete foreigner so they can see again with fresh eyes the behaviors
and culture that has become all too familiar and taken-for-granted.
The Exercise
Step 1: Send Your Aliens on a Mission
The key to the exercise is to shift the observational viewpoint from comfortable,
knowledgeable insider to naïve, inquisitive outsider. Students will accomplish this by
taking on a role of alien who is sent to study the actions and behaviors of humans in
selected everyday contexts. The framing of the exercise is important to activate the mindset
and role of the extraterrestrial. Here’s a brief example of one way we have set up the
assignment:
You are an alien anthropologist and are assigned to study a small, bluish planet
whose awkward (compared to our own sleek, compact physiology) looking
inhabitants have evolved a rudimentary intelligence. They seem to constantly
vocalize from tiny, flexible cavities situated in the lower section of their smallish
cranial chambers. From what we gather planet X452679404890 is called “Urrth” by
these inhabitants. It is located in the “fly over” territory of the universe. The
Universe Research Council wants a first report on the behavior of the inhabitants in
a specific situation.
To accomplish this, you should choose a single urrthling activity of interest and
observe this in detail for over 100 solariums (approximately 1/24 of the typical
urrth orbit). Because you won’t understand the language, what you should focus on
is what people are doing in detail. This is the first glimpse our civilization will have
of this remote and primitive interplanetary outpost. We look forward to learning
about this newly discovered species.
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Step 2: Choose a Context
This exercise can be applied to any situation. Students might be working on a
project and want to purposefully observe a specific environment and look more closely at
behaviors within these. In our case, we teach a course on creative thinking that equips
students with the toolkit and methods to work more creatively as individuals and within
groups. The point of the exercise in this case is just to pick any context of interest and
observe it in detail. The setting and activity they choose to observe is not as important as
how they approach and document their observations, which we detail in the next step.
Step 3: Document from the Alien Perspective
Crucially important is to recognize the role language plays in shaping and sharing
our perceptions. By making it essential to adhere to the voice and language of an alien
witnessing human behavior up close for the first time, this will build in discipline so the
students focus their observation and reports on details and perceiving them in a new
fashion.
For example, let’s say a student is observing humans exercising by walking and
running around an indoor oval track. If they were to use conventional descriptions, they
might report something to the effect that “one person walked around the track in 5 minutes
for a total of 3 miles, he was wearing red and black running shoes…” This would have no
meaning for an alien who may have a completely different morphology.
Adhering to the alien perspective forces observers to make visible and unfamiliar
that which hides in plain sight obscured by routine perception. An alien anthropologist
might write: “An activity humans engage in is mobilizing themselves around an ellipse,
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without interruption. They trace the same path over and over much like a planet orbits a
star until they cease the activity. One specimen circumnavigated this route 24 times,
steadily and monotonously, with a wire of some sort connecting the head with a grasping
limb. This seems to be a form of ritualized behavior that has no immediate reward or
result. One creature imbibed a bright liquid from a vessel upon cessation, by unfastening
the vessel and tipping it an extreme angle to run into the cranial opening…”
Step 4: Report to the Alien Council
A short interpretation of the observations is required of students. This is where the
students move from writing their observations to synthesizing an analysis. This part of the
exercise can contain several deliverables:

Things never observed before: students highlight what new things they observed
that had not captured their attention previously.

Key insights: these are the insights they gained that changed the way they and
others might look a specific behavior or activities moving forward.

New questions: these are questions that arose because of this study that will be
helpful to answer with more detailed, specifically focused observation.

Challenges: students identify what they found most difficult doing this exercise, so
these can be addressed to build their capability as anthropologists.
Step 5: Guess the Observed Activity
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Besides sharing the highlights of the report with the class, a fun part of this exercise
is for students to read an excerpt of their observation to the class and have their classmates
guess what activity they observed. It’s been surprising how long it takes sometimes for
students to guess correctly, but this fun wrap-up also helps students see even more
contexts in new, creative ways.
Student Reaction
The following student reaction was prompted by asking particpants a few questions:
Did this exercise improve your observation skills? What did you gain the most from it? What
was most challenging? Overall, would you recommend this activity for future use…why or why
not?
First, this just seemed like a fun exercise. Based on our lecture, I had already bought
into the idea that I wasn’t observant enough in my life, so I was missing out on discovering
more problems people have, which I now know are the basis for so many business
opportunities.
This alien assignment worked for me. It served as a useful way to step outside my
usual, lax way of watching people do things. It helped me put on some different lenses that
magnified and enhanced my vision. Paying closer attention revealed lots of small things
that previously escaped my notice.
The assignment is memorable and I’ve noticed I’ve become a real advocate for doing
observations. Whether it just me sitting at a coffee shop or working with my startup team, I
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will remind myself to study humans like an alien. It’s made my everyday life a much more
interesting place. I feel I’m building a real strength to observe better.
I found most challenging the massive amount of things to attend with even one
small action. Say someone is drinking a cup of coffee. There is so much to look for in the
details, from how they grip the cup, to the placement of their mouth on a lid, to the motion
of their eyes as they tilt their head back. You aren’t sure if knowing such details matter for
anything, but I did develop a range of useful insights.
I would definitely recommend you use this exercise going forward. Overall the class
seemed to have a blast. The part where we shared key snippets from our write-ups and had
to guess on what was being observed was fun. It’s like those picture puzzles that ask you to
guess what everyday object it is based on a massively zoomed-in photo taken under a
microscope.
References
Eagleman, D. (2012), Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, New York: Vintage.
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Kelley, T. & Littman, J. (2005), The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating
the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, New
York: Currency/Doubleday.
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